Where I come from carrots always went with apples. I remember my grandma grating an apple and a carrot and giving it to me in a glass like the best snack ever. So I just had to come up with a cake recipe that would marry these two sweet friends.

This cake has no added fat, no butter, no oil. The only fat comes from egg yolks and a tiny bit from flour. I calculated the nutritional information of this loaf dividing it into 12 slices. I learnt that each slice should have around 120 calories and just 1 gram of fat so that is pretty amazing. I am not advocating to remove fat from your diet but if you have to, for some reason, this is a cake you can still eat. So there. Enjoy this delicious, very low fat treat!

Ingredients:

3 eggs

3/4 cup sugar

3/4 cup applesauce

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/3 cup all purpose flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground cardamom

1 cup grated carrots

1/2 tsp fresh ginger (optional or can be replaced with dried ginger)

1/4 cup raisins (optional)

Preheat the oven to 160C/320F.

Prepare a loaf pan.

In a bowl of an electric whisk place eggs and start beating on high speed.

Keep gradually adding sugar and beat until the mixture is perfectly smooth.

This mixture will not stiffen as there are yolks there, so the whites will stay liquidy.

This is a recipe for breakfast muffins featuring some yummy kale. They will not be very aerated and light because you have the banana, apple and kale but they are guaranteed to be delicious. I am only using 1/3 cup of sugar for this recipe which makes them sweeter than a slice of bread but definitely less sweet than a cake or a dessert muffin. So if you’d like some dessert muffins, go ahead and increase the sugar to half a cup. Or go with another one of my recipes for muffins.

I promised to entertain a person who suddenly told me she had to be on a gluten free and milk free diet, due to her doctor’s instructions. I made it look like it was going to be no problem at all and only then went on to panic at home. I looked on Pinterest, on Yummly and a couple of other pages and I was just overwhelmed with possibilities. Many of them asked for types of flour I have never heard about and I was a little bit lost. Next day I went to my local grocery store to find one, sad gluten free flour mix, which was way overpriced. So off I went to my favourite location to shop for food: a store with goods imported from the Middle East. I buy all my spices there, delicious brown rice in 5kg bags and I frequently buy things I have never tried and google the solutions to them at home. I was never disappointed, a lot of those foods are really magical.

Back to my story though. I looked at their shelves and found a 1 1/2 kg bag of rice flour. I immediately knew that this is the amount and the type of stuff I’d be happy experimenting with.

I was prepared for these muffins to be too dense, gloopy and maybe chewy. They are none of these things. As you can see they raised very well and I promise you that the flavour is also great. I wanted to do a vanilla bean muffins just so that I could have a base gluten free recipe on hand whenever I need it. This is the result of a couple of experiments and this is the best one so far. I am sure it would be easy to modify it slightly in order to make a chocolate or fruit muffin. This queen, however is a vanilla bean!

This recipe is an eggless, vegan cake with delicious strawberries. I started thinking about this recipe when I ran out of eggs one day and really wanted to bake something without having to go to the shop. So here you have it. It takes a while in the oven and being vegan it does have a slightly different flavour and smell. Still delicious though.

As this cake bakes for such a long time, it’s a good idea to check on it periodically and cover it with aluminium to prevent the top from burning. A lot depends on the strawberries. The more juice they release into the dough, the longer it takes to cook, so keep your cocktail stick at the ready to jab and know for sure. The baking time I provided here is for super juicy fruit or even a batch from the freezer, so if you use hard, young berries, you could be done within an hour.

Ingredients:

1 cup applesauce

1/2 cup rapeseed oil

1 tsp vanilla extract

3/4 cup sugar

1 1/2 cup all purpose flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 cup strawberries, cut in halves

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F.

In a medium bowl mix applesauce, oil, vanilla extract and sugar until smooth.

Mix flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda in a separate bowl until evenly distributed and add to the applesauce mixture.

Fold together with a spatula until there are no more streaks of flour.

Add strawberries and gently stir them in.

Pour the mixture into a lined, small loaf tin and bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Do you have any leftover muesli that nobody in your house wants to eat anymore and don’t know what to do with it?

These muffins are a way to get rid of a portion of it anyway and will be eaten without a clue. These are also muffins made partially with wholemeal rye flour but the recipe will work if you want to replace it with wheat flour. I like the rye in them though. It makes them a little darker and gives you more fiber as well, which can be handy if you’re having them for your breakfast.

Ingredients:

2 eggs

1/4 cup applesauce (it can be replaced with oil, you know the drill)

1/4 cup rapeseed oil

1 cup all purpose flour

3/4 cup wholemeal rye flour (finely ground)

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 cup milk

4 Tbsp muesli

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F.

In a bowl, whisk eggs, applesauce, oil and sugar until smooth.

Add both flours, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and mix with a spatula, while adding milk, until the mixture is well combined.